Time Heals No Wounds
by Flautasareamazing
Summary: Time can heal anything except Jack. She takes everyone else's pain, but he clings to his like a lifeline. Time heals nothing, it only gives the hurt to someone else. Someone who hides her cracked porcelain facade in the shadows, forever a grieving mother without her child.


_**So this is set in the Pole, before Sandy dies. I don't know if I'll continue this yet. **_

Jack had one regret in his life of so many long, tortuous, lonely years, and it was taking his sister skating that day. Sure, he didn't regret saving her, he would do it again in a heartbeat if the choice needed to be made, but he should have listened to his mother, looked at the weather, any use of common sense which would have told him that the ice would be too thin. The ice would have never held their weight, but he didn't pay any mind to that and took her skating anyway, almost killing her. In all honesty, had she fallen through the ice before he had the chance to save her, he probably would have gone mad with grief and guilt, and would have killed himself shortly thereafter.

He thought about her often, wondering sometimes what her life had been like without him and hoping she had grown up to be happy. That she had fallen in love, gotten married, and had a perfect life. And though he doubted it was, he told himself that her life was perfect because he thought she deserved nothing but perfection for all the pain he had caused her, and all he could do was hope that the same guilt had not plagued his darling baby sister.

These thoughts were well disguised. Hidden under a charming, flirtatious, mischievous facade that was often as thin and fragile as a snowflake of his own creation so that no one could see the turmoil raging under the painted mask he put on to hide from the world. Most of the time, no one noticed. He didn't stick around long enough to let them. But one person did, because she knew what happened, and had watched him change into this shell of a man that he was. Time had watched over him, and, try as she might, she couldn't take his pain from him. That was her job, Delia had been around for a very, very long time. she was the first Guardian, though she hid herself well, especially from the children who believed in her. She had been a child that loved to explore. one day, she was picking the rare flowers that bloom in the winter on the tops of mountains near her village. She was distracted by a strange boy and often went to see him, his name was Blake. Blake Pitherman. Well, it got to the point that she had fallen in love with this strange boy, but he had a twisted soul. He loved her, but, because other boys sought her for her beauty, his mind warped with jealousy. An argument broke out between the two, she fell down a rather large rabbit hole and hit her head. by the time he had realised what he had done and gotten to her, it was too late. She had no pulse. In anguish, the twisted boy plunged a dagger into his heart, so as they might be together in death. They both awoke, finding nothing but the moon. The boy had a new name now. A name as dark and twisted as the decaying, un-beating heart inside his chest. Pitch Black. Pitch ruled over the land in those dark days, and he sought after Delia, whom he eventually found and made his queen of darkness. She went on loving Pitch before the perilous tumble into the dark ages. He became violent often, though, and as no one could see them, his broken wife had no where to look for help or seek asylum from this monster. She turned to the moon with her plea, hiding herself from her personal hell under the guidance of the moon. The girl out of time was not alone when she fled, though, unknowingly, she had carried a tiny, innocent miracle with her, who was born to her as Luna. Named for the moon, the giver of hope to Delia in her darkest hour. Luna was her sole comfort and the only reminder of the man she had once loved. Pitch was not unaware for long, however, and ripped Delia's hope from her by taking the child and her mother captive. Pitch spoiled his daughter, it was true, but her mother was a different story. He was even more warped by the minute. Delia tried to take Luna and leave, but Pitch had tainted her mind with his evil words, turning her precious ray of moonlight into a princess of the darkness. Delia fled without her child. The girl is still slave to her father's words, oblivious to her mother's anguish.

Delia was the only one that understood Jack, because she knew even worse pain than he. She became the guardian of time, taking away the wounds of the suffering, lonely, lost and depressed. Pitch foiled her help at every turn, bringing death and sadness and in his wake, trailed a small, beautiful girl with porcelain pale skin, iridescent, shimmering seafoam eyes, and waist-long ringlets the color of cherry oak wood, giving her an almost angelic look, sharply contrasting with her father's hellacious form. Time heals all wounds, except for Delia's, and that's the price she must pay for helping others. She takes their wounds, mental physical, and emotional, and bears their scars in the hopes that one day, her daughter might return to her.

She wanted desperately to help Jack, but he wouldn't let her. In order for her to take someones pain, they have to want to give it up, and Jack's pain was all that kept him moving. It hurt, but he clung to it like a only way to stop his pain was for her to go back and make sure it ever happened. She lived in hundreds of dimensions at once, and stayed in the most likely present simply for ease and lack of headache. She knew Jack suffered, but also knew that she would have to talk to him before she could help him. It wasn't her place to just go and change his history just like that.

"Thinking about your sister?" She asked softly, sitting down next to him as he gazed out an open window. He turned to look at her, tears in his eyes, though they turned to ice as they rolled down his cheeks. He nodded slightly.

"Thinking about your daughter?" he asked her, and she responded with her own grievous nod.

"I can help you Jack," She said gently.

"I already told you, I'm not going to make you bear any more pain because of me," He shook his head solemnly.

"I wouldn't have to, Jack. I could go back. I could make sure you and your sister didn't go skating that day or any time before the ice melted that year. I could stop all of it from happening, Jack," She told him, looking him dead in the eyes and willing him to make the right decision. The decision that would end his suffering.

"What's the catch?" He asked gravely.

She shook her head. "No catch, it's just…."

"Just what?"

"If I stop you from falling, I stop everything that happened because of it. I stop you becoming a guardian. And I stop the only chance I have of getting my daughter back if you defeat Pitch."

"No." Jack said plainly.

"W-what?" She stuttered, bewildered. No one had ever declined her offer to take away their pain before.

"I said no. I won't let you change my past. My suffering is mine, and you shouldn't have to carry all the pain that this world has to offer."


End file.
